Verum, Intelligendo, quod Intemporate Sapientia.

Archive for March, 2010

Why is it that the commercials I keep hearing for the census use things like schools and buses as an example of the kind of thing we need to “get our fair share” of? After all, the last I looked, I pay taxes for my local schools, and taxes on my license tabs to pay for the Pierce and Sound Transit buses no one is riding?

Oh yeah, because the Feds never met a dollar with strings that they didn’t love to give out.

“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” – Abraham Lincoln

Recently, a liberal blogger, heady with the euphoria of select Democrats forcing the passage of the Health Care Takeover of 2010, in the face of bipartisan resistance, published a post precociously titled “No, You Cannot Have Your Country Back.” in response to the cries of some conservative Americans, who watched the proceeding in horror, realizing to what extent this bill proposes to entangle government into the lives of every day Americans.

The post did its level best to tar those opposed to the government usurpation in the predictable terms, with retardation soaked references to “Our Country” [that of conservatives] having ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, taking the standard leftist accusation of “Racism!” in the face of resistance and delivering it indirectly (What a clever boy! Maybe MSNBC will give you a show!). These accusations are no substitute for arguments, and people of substance no longer accept this as the condemnation and assault on character that they once did. We would rather deal in the currency of proof and logic rather than the economy of ignorant emotion and spittle-flecked baseless denunciation. It also contained the predictable attempts to describe how this monstrosity is simply Congress fulfilling its “power” to provide for the general welfare, and declaring this presumptive overreach a moral undertaking, done to fulfill the right to pursue happiness. Shockingly, it doesn’t sound any more intelligent when he said it than when the Speaker of the House waxed eloquent with the same sophistry upon the passage of the bill.

But it also reveals a nearly incomprehensible arrogance and inability to grasp the most basic of realities.

This country is not for you to take.

Success in incrementally usurping authority that you were never intended to have has emboldened you to the point of unrestrained cockiness. You have built your power on the dependency of people too gullible to believe that they could not manage their own affairs without the “assistance” of a government entirely too eager to be generous to a select few with the earnings of many others. You cloaked your own intentions with a cloying excuse about how you only intended to help those less fortunate, and you tacked conditions upon this assistance that destroyed the families of those “assisted” and made government the de facto head of these families. You fostered a sense of entitlement that would soon dwarf any charitable intent raised as a justification of such “assistance” to begin with. And then you fed the beast. You fed the beast until it became so bloated, and so unwieldy that it became the exception that ate the rule. Your subjects, totally dependent upon you soon accepted the premise that the entitlements that for decades had supplanted individual ambition was a right, given to them by a generous and benevolent government.

But no matter how much you have attempted to teach and breed the knowledge out of us, we as Americans do indeed have particular rights, and they are not granted to us by the government; we took hold of them despite government. This is our birthright, a legacy of centuries, of something so precious that the very Declaration of these rights echos across the generations, and looks upon we, the keepers our own liberties, with a stern countenance, and reminds us to this day that we have a republic, if we can keep it.

The utopia that you, our self-appointed betters, keep trying to push upon us is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind for we, their posterity. Any man who must look to the government as the provider of the necessities of his own well-being, is not, and cannot be free. Free men know that the only proper role of government is as the guardian of his rights to control every aspect of his own destiny and to be secure in the ability to provide for himself in the manner in which he sees fit, unmolested by the petty jealousies and covetous actions of his neighbors. The recent actions of Congress and the President do not honor the principles on which this nation was founded; those men knew a government that purports to regulate any market in which it also competes is an enemy of freedom. Any government which does so funded by the public fisk with the intent to drive competitors out of business is a thief, and any government which wraps itself in moral pronouncements and self-congratulations as it does so is a liar and sophist.

When we seized our God-given rights, and threw off the yoke of an oppressive government an ocean away, we did not do so with the intent to assemble our own hydra-headed beast here on our shores, poking a head into every aspect of how we live our lives, how we spend our money, and how we choose to live. This bill, by its very nature, will necessarily lead to government making decisions about our treatment, our diets, and our incomes. By its nature, this intrusion into our personal and private decisions, this peering into our individual bank accounts, this ability to pass judgment on our diets and other decisions that we were formerly free to make without such intrusion violate restrictions on government placed upon it by “We the People” with the ratification of the Bill of Rights. A government free to do such things is one that is no longer restrained by the Fourth Amendment “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

No matter how hard you try, you cannot change the meaning of these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These words were not committed to paper to proclaim a belief in the idea that all men are and should be of equal condition. Indeed, if they had intended such a thing to be true, then they would have designed a government that would not have expressly enumerated powers to the government, and specifically stated that others were reserved to smaller sovereigns, and the people themselves. Indeed, if this had been their intent, then there would have been no mention of people having themselves, houses, papers, and effects to have secure from government intrusions, because a government intended to enforce equality of condition could not allow any notion of privacy or private property to exist. The equality that Jefferson spoke of was equality of opportunity, the idea that anyone with the same abilities and the same ambition could achieve the same things for themselves. This notion was embodied in the lives of these men, who were all well-educated, but possessed varying levels of ambition and ability to go with their well-trained intellect.

This gulf that exists between the nation that was, and the nation that you would foist upon us, is likely to breed contempt between the champions of each. Passions will be inflamed between such people. Both will claim that righteousness is part and parcel of their cause. However, there is no morality in a belief that one has the right or duty to declare that another makes too much and must be compelled to give generously to those who don’t make enough. When we empower those who believe that there is, there will never be any incentive for restraint, and those who have more, for what ever the reason, be it the result of harder and longer labor, shrewd investment, or inheritance can never be secure in the belief that government represents them. Any government that would so victimize some its people and give what it steals to others no longer has the consent of the governed. And when a free people recognize that their government no longer subscribes to the principles set forth in its charters and bylaw, chiefly limited government and fiscal responsibility, and talk of restoring the government they were born to, it cannot be treason, no matter how much the unwittingly enslaved wish it to be. Nor can it be sedition, as those who would support tyrants want it to be, as such a “crime” can only exist as an affront to the right of free speech. We have a right to be angry with those who would lie to us as part of their attempt to steal from us, and put us under the yoke of a mediocrity that will make us all equal, with a few of us more equal than the rest. We have a right to express the idea that such a government no longer enjoys our consent, and that such betrayals earn the penalties reserved for betrayal. Because being an American still means something. And that something is not soft tyranny of dependency on government, and the hard tyranny of a government that presumes to retain the consent of the governed while usurping rights reserved to the states, and the people themselves. If you choose enslavement, there are plenty of places you can go, but we will not be chained because you are not willing to believe in yourselves, and instead are willing to cede your freedoms and responsibilities to government in exchange for whatever it chooses to let you have. The promise of the New World was for people who would make their own destiny. The Old World still exists for those who want to mire themselves in the restraints of collectivism and dependency on welfare states.

We live in a free country. It is not for you to take. And we will not be shamed or cowed into accepting your chains. The tyranny of political correctness holds no sway over us, because we do not live in a world where we perceive ourselves victims, and need government to legitimize a perception of ourselves as such. And when we find that you have gone too far, and taken too much, there will be no more warning. The time for talk will indeed be over, and unlike your Chicago Messiah™, we will not continually proclaim it, like the insecure pretender who continually repeats himself because he believes that no one of consequence is paying attention to him. When we stop talking, then you will understand the admonition against angering a patient person.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on, I can’t believe you.”- Freidrich Nietsche.

This week has been notable as much for what the Dhims have had to say now that they have forced their takeover bill through, as it has for all the lies they told leading up to it, and continue to tell us after forcing us to buy this crap sandwich.

First up, from the “Now the Truth Can Be Told” file, we have John Dingel (D) of Michigan speaking this week on The Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR.

“Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.” -John Dingell

Well, he is right. They have taken a long time to put their socialist agenda into legislation. But then, without instrumentalism, they never would have managed to get it all, and the idea that what is your is yours and what is someone else’s is yours is like rust. It never sleeps, and given enough time and inattention, it can consume a good thing.

What? There is no socialism? That’s crazy talk? Wow. I guess someone should hurry up and tell the Wrong Reverend Sharptongue.

Now, normally I disagree with the Wrong Reverend, but I think he gets this half-right. I think that Obama is a socialist, and I think that he wanted to be more open about it during the campaign, but he knew he would have far less of a chance of getting elected by stating directly that he was going to impose a tyranny of mediocrity upon this country than if he spoke indirectly about fundamentally changing this country, and vague platitudes about “hope and change”. Still, even so, he still slipped and gave us a window into what he was really thinking, which resulted in the “Joe the Plumber” moment, which required the presstitutes to work hand-in-hand with people in the state government who were more than happy to release information that wasn’t theirs to release so they could smear the man who tripped up the most brilliant legal scholar ever to occupy the Oval Office.

I think the Wrong Reverend knew what we were getting when the least experienced man ever to hold the office was swept into office on a tide of euphoria brought on by white guilt, the naive belief in a post-racial president, and people who wanted desperately to believe in a new, transparent way of politics without corruption and secrecy. I just don’t believe that everyone who participated in rolling that tide believed we would get what we have today.

“But it’s Al Sharpton!” you say. “That clownshoe is an embarrassment to any person of color who doesn’t want to be a victim, or rely on the assistance of government. How credible is he?”

I understand completely. How about a U.S. Senator telling us what this was really all about?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Senator Max Baucus:

“This is also an income shift. It’s a shift, it’s a leveling to help lower income Americans. Too often in the last couple of three years, the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much. The wealthier are getting way, way too wealthy. Wages have not kept up with the increased income of the highest income Americans. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution income in America, because health care is now a right for all Americans and because health care is now affordable for all Americans.” – Senator Max Baucus (D).

Nevermind that sound. It’s just the collective wail of the Founding Fathers, screaming “What gives any government official the right to determine if some one makes too much or not enough???”

In fact, I think I see Jefferson now, pouring over his drafts of the Declaration of Independence, muttering “I’m positive I did not write “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the confiscation of other people’s property if government thinks they have too much.”

All kidding aside, taking from one to give to another, in whatever form you chose to manifest it…socialism, communism, marxism, simply was not contemplated as an acceptable role of government.

How do I know?

Aside from their rightful and manifest aversion to government interference in the lives of the citizenry, you need only read the words of the Fourth Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in theirpersons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

There would be no need for such a measure if people’s property was government’s to do with as it pleases, and government doing what it pleases with everyone’s things is pretty much the working definition of the -isms that we are dealing with. And of course, the people under such a system would have no need for rights independent of the government, so the Ninth Amendment would be pointless.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

I think it is past time to remind these thieves and robbers that when they cannot be bothered to respect the law of the land, then they no longer have the consent of the governed.

I had to fight to urge to spit when this evil socialist hag had the nerve to categorize the passage of the Health Care Takeover of 2009 2010 as honoring to the Declaration of Independence and the Founders of this nation. I don’t think I could ever get hit in the head enough confuse an increase in dependence on government as “Honoring” the Charter of our Freedom and the men who set our rights to paper.

Of course, I say this with the full understanding of the fact that rights aren’t really rights if I have to rely on government shaking me and my fellow citizens down to provide them. “Rights” are rights if they would exist without government. Government can take rights away, but they cannot “give” them to me. My rights come from God.

Of course, this means judging on both what we have seen and heard. I have made my judgement. The Constitutional Scholar who “loves this country” so much that he has to “fundamentally change” the relation between the government and us by growing the debt to unsustainable levels, making we the people purchase health insurance, and taking over one-sixth of our economy doesn’t love this country. He loves what he wants to make it.

I can’t look the other way while he and his fellow travellers usurp power they were never meant to have, and do so while proclaiming it to be for our own good. Like many of my friends who served this nation in uniform, I also took an oath, and it also requires me to support the Constitution of the United States.

I will oppose these actions with every fiber of my being. I will do everything I can peaceably, and if they remain determined to subvert the law and enslave the people of this nation, then I too, will have to remain resolute.

“General Welfare” means for everyone’s benefit, not for a few people’s benefit. You don’t decide to fix something for a few by changing it for everyone, and then sticking us all with the bill. Especially not for something that is not for the federal government to act upon at all. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments could not be more clear.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

…

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

For too long, the Federal Government constantly pushed the envelope of its power through the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the General Welfare clause, with nary a shove back from the people or the individual states. Indeed, one might think that the Civil War abolished these amendments. However, if mandating that you must buy government approved health insurance, as part of a scheme that can only end with private carriers going out of business and leaving the government as the sole provider of health insurance coverage is a legitimate exercise of the power granted to the federal government, then the Ninth and Tenth Amendment mean nothing.

Those who actually know what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution mean have no intention of letting these people fundamentally change the only free nation on earth. We were unconvinced by the lies peddled leading up to this vote. We will remain unconvinced when you tour this country trying to sell us what you already bought for us, like hucksters of old selling stock in the Acme Barn Door and Widget Oil Company. We will remain unconvinced when you pack up your offices and go back to your home districts, praying you will be granted anonymity.

Perused a lot of sites this morning, and when I read the left leaning proprietor of one opining that campaigning for repeal was campaigning for the greed of insurance companies, all I could do was laugh.

There is such a thing as the mote in your eye, but it is quite another to walk around with an 8 x 8 sticking out of it. Railing against “the greed of insurance companies” while empowering government to root deep into my pocket to pay for your care shows cognative dissonance on a galactic level.

Enjoy your victory. You’ll have a lot of time to consider it while waiting days to see your doc in a few years.

Since Congress does not apparently make any corolation between spending money it does not have, and the effect on “We, the Peasants”, I suggest this modest proposal:

Every time Congress votes to pass a bill requiring them to spend money they do not have, their own salaries drop Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000) annually. Nullifying their salaries does not stop the penalty. In fact, if the “spend” more than they earn, then for each vote after zeroing out their salaries, a loved one (spouse first, then children, then parents, then sibs, then cousins) have to work for the government for free, cleaning toilets in public restrooms, then janitorial work, washing dishes in the Congressional cafeteria, and then what ever manual labor we can set them to. Their immediate supervisors will be retired Marine DIs, who will be kept strictly sober, to make them extra irritable.

I suspect Congress’ spending problem will stop overnight, and the budget will be miraculously balanced.

I don’t see this ending well. Non-responsiveness backed by bullying and the dear hope that we peons do not know or understand the laws that they would deign to threaten us with. From the article at Big Government.

After researching 47 U.S.C. 223, I called Mr. Garamendi’s office again and asked to be transferred back to the Capital Police Agent. The Agent picked up the phone and I explained to him that the statute he cited was not controlling since it only prohibits people from calling with the specific intent to harass. I further explained that I was simply trying to voice my concerns with the intent of getting Mr. Garamendi to change his mind, not to harass his staff. The Agent eventually agreed with my position and said he would call Mr. Garamendi’s office and instruct his staff that I was within my rights to call my congressman and voice my concerns.

"I want these “…and I’m a communist” dumbshits to have a Coming to Jesus moment that they will NEVER forget. I want them staring in to the eyes of every American who knows that government has very specifically designated roles, and are fed-up to their eyeballs with the overeaching, paternalistic, oppressive monster that the Left (with help from the establishment Right) set loose on us. I want those greedy, lazy, control-freaky bastards quaking with fear when they are met with an electorate determined to wrest their liberties, including the right to fail, back from a government that would enslave us all to the service of a soul-killing mediocrity. I want their asses so horrifiyingly and memorably whipped that the mere memory will cow a century’s worth of socialist/communist/marxist acoyltes into an ashamed silence."
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"When a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we no longer have a Constitution, we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is according to their own views of what it ought to mean."--Justice Curtis, Dissent, Dred Scott v. Sanford

"The very idea of power, and the right of the people to establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government. All obstructions to the execution of its laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberations and actions of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency."- George Washington

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
-Plato

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
-Plato